


I Want Unsettled

by fujiidom



Category: No Ordinary Family
Genre: F/M, Fanmix, Handwaving, Hank McCoy-esque Stupidity, May/December, Mutant Pride, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 07:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fujiidom/pseuds/fujiidom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the end of his junior year of high school, J.J. moves in with Katie. Give or take a decade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want Unsettled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weasleytook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleytook/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday, [Lisa](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/weasleytook)! I love you dearly and owe you for constantly being there to beta and lend an ear and being amazing in general. I've been meaning to write this for a long time, so hopefully you don't mind being the most lovely and worthy excuse I will ever come across to get around to it. I also had no one to beta this because normally you're my go-to, especially in the fandom and minor pairing that literally no one but one another even still holds a flame for anymore. So please excuse the mess. And I know I'm cheating by my casting, but even though I think Andrew Garfield is a closer actual pick in terms of looks, I couldn't help myself.

Three weeks before J.J. turns eighteen, he reads a book on forging signatures. He’s sure he's probably abused his powers for worse ends, but this feels pretty bad. It’s not just cheating to learn a skill; it’s cheating to learn to cheat.

Regardless, after a few minutes, he’s good to go and makes sure to lift up his pen on the P in Powell, like his mother does. For a brief second, he almost wonders if his near perfect duplication could’ve ever been as perfected without his powers, given his potential predisposition to art. This lapse of pride circles back around quickly to making him acutely aware of how disappointed his parents would be to see his talents used in such a way.

He walks the paperwork down the hall, then two floors below his mother’s lab, to apply for testing trials to begin.

The building is quiet this late in the evening and he doesn’t run into anyone he recognizes. When he doubles back to retrieve his belongings from his temp station back behind Katie’s desk, he stops and glances over to where the plant they had been testing climbed another few inches in the air. He grins. 

They weren’t simply testing on plants, but since this specific plant shared vital DNA with himself and his family, J.J. was fairly confident that combined with the successful non-human trials things were looking good for the upcoming transition.

It’s not until after he straightens his desk and heads out for the night that the plant shifts from green to brown, a few leaves fall off, then blooms again, stretching another short inch upwards.  


###

  
J.J. continues to underwhelm himself with his high school studies. Any other set of parents would’ve sent him off to an advanced school where it would at least be easier to pretend to be challenged at. Instead, they continue to keep up the ruse that they are a normal family with a seventeen-year-old who didn’t know a differential from a hole in the ground.

He signs up to take online classes at local community colleges, testing his ability to stretch his intellect into areas beyond math and science. His transcripts aren’t stellar enough to allow for early admission to most universities, much less the top-rated ones with the programs he’s truly interested in, until at least he’s in his senior year. 

J.J. stays in this holding pattern of doing nothing and knowing that even when it is his time to do well, he probably won’t be able to excel to the extreme, since his parents’ insistence that he not be seen as a prodigy negates ever truly acing the SATs. He could solve Fermat’s Theorem, but he’d still have to keep it under wraps, by their rules.

If it weren’t for Katie, he’s sure he would’ve gone absolutely insane by now.

Halfway through last year, she finally stepped in and insisted that J.J. come work as an intern in the lab. To most, it would appear as basic nepotism. To the Powells and Katie, it's clearly a much needed outlet for J.J.’s mind. He doesn’t have to dumb down any of his explanations, there’s no need to pretend he’s normal around other scientists since they didn’t know him prior to his intelligence boost and figure it’s just his mother’s brains being passed down.

And Katie. 

Katie must know that on some level he’s smarter than her, well, his brain is. But you’d never know it talking to her. She’s been underplaying her own genius for a long time, it seems, and it’s never clearer than when she actually corrects his work and challenges his approaches. He’s been halfway through graphing a Euler spiral only to hear her clear her throat and politely scribble over his original calculations, thus changing the entire curve.

He’s never taken the time to realize how lonely it’s been, living the way he was until he got this job and until Katie made it her personal mission to design a curriculum that actually requires him to study more than a single book in order to master. 

He notices that the length of time the information stays in his brain has increased, as well. This is what he really treasures. It’s no longer just a brush with intelligence, as knowledge comes and goes as it pleases, as if on its own accord. Now, J.J. can carry on a conversation in ancient Aramaic as well as compose the sheet music for a concerto from only listening to it being played.

He no longer feels like losing his abilities will leave him a husk of what he once was. It’s a simple realization, but it’s an answer to a question which has been looming over him for a long time. It’s with that renewal of confidence that he decides to start a project of his own.

Both Katie and his mother have a long list of applications they hope to derive from their work in the lab. J.J. is reading over one of their proposals and occasionally watching Katie fidget with her Kitty Pryde action figure. Well, even with his brain, he isn’t likely to crack quantum tunneling in any manner of short term. But Colossus.

Daphne bought him a dumb Colossus figure for his own desk, knowing that his pointless crush on Katie, albeit never likely to come to fruition, still exists. Some girls you just can’t keep out of your thoughts. He could never bring himself to put it on his work desk, but it is still sitting in his bedroom in much the same place that Katie’s always ends up after a day spent wiggling it around, worrying it between her delicate fingers, while solving problems and finishing paperwork. 

He might not be able to get anyone to phase through a wall, but he could make things taller. Straightening spines, growing out limbs, finally being taller than five three; there were any number of practical applications.

He leaves off that last bit when proposing it to his mom and her team. Katie’s eyes light up at the initiative and he’s twice as thrilled when it moves forward into the beginning stages of research.  


###

  
For weeks, the trials plateau into being next to useless, but finally things come to a head. J.J.’s plant appears to be growing a full foot higher than its species is expected to.

Although the lab mice only grow a few centimeters longer, they appear stronger and have an increased weight to match. 

J.J. makes the mistake of getting his hopes up. When he approaches his mother about beginning clinical trials, it’s clear that she has to bite back a laugh. J.J. has a flash of that initial blow back when he began testing well and doing better in school. As if it’s so absurd that he think he knew what he was doing. It was the “leave this to the professionals” of looks and it pisses him off.

His mom insists that she will help spearhead his progress into more progress, but it’s unlikely that anything will be tested on human beings before he’s graduated college, let alone while he’s still interning here.

Perhaps it’s because she brings up a subject he’s already frustrated with, in comparing it with college, or maybe just because J.J.’s abilities have never reached a ceiling while working at Global Tech he thinks of himself as infallible.

Whatever it is that causes his decision to go ahead despite his mother’s warnings, he forges her signature on the paperwork, and hands it off to the lab downstairs to begin synthesizing a new set of vials for large animal application.  


###

  
A day later, J.J. sits around pretending to be busy, waiting to hear back from the lab. Katie is at her desk, glasses on because the current problem set is too serious to pretend her eye sight is any better than it is, and tapping away at her keyboard.

The office phone beeps twice and J.J. volunteers to answer it to deaf ears as Katie continues burrowing through her work. He leaves and comes back to see her still hunching over her desk.

He gives her a long look before walking into the testing lab. If there were any last lingering bits of hesitation flitting around J.J.’s mind prior to that, pulling on a lab coat and having it fall down to his ankles certainly dispelled them on the spot. He readies the formula and makes sure he’s sitting in direct view of the cameras, for later reference. He writes down the dosage amount, date, time, and pulls out an unused needle.  


###

  
Katie hears an echo of glass breaking and it takes a second for her to register what’s going on. She is deep into calculating some information on the molecule they’ve been studying when she hears it. She has to shake off her focus to look around for the source.

J.J.’s not at his desk and a quick jog to the lab entrance makes it evident that he is on the far side of the room, now bracing himself against the cool linoleum floor. 

“J.J., what happened? Are you okay?” Katie is already breathless at the sight of him collapsed on the ground.

J.J. takes a few deep breaths and can’t seem to find words.

“I heard a crash, what was—” Katie trails off and her jaw opens and closes, herself now equally speechless. There’s a shattered vial that looks way emptier than full and a needle that’s spun out to lay up against the wall behind the lab table.

J.J. looks up at her, clearly both in pain and shock, but most of all scared. It only takes her brain a few extra seconds to keep up but she’s soon right there with him. Stephanie is going to _kill_ them.

And she was right to, since Katie was right outside the lab doors while it happened. She’s recapping the events of the day, realizing now why J.J. has appeared so antsy and bored. Why he walked in here without a word and why he’s stopped pushing to further the research. He already knew he’d be pushing it forward himself.

Suddenly, her internal guilt trip grinds to a halt when she realizes the genuine risk J.J. just took. “J.J., what the hell did you do?” She helps him up and knows from the look on his face he’s registered her anger.

He winces and finally seems capable of catching his breath. Katie moves across the room to get a heart monitor and stethoscope from where they’re buried in an infrequently used drawer.

“When my mom told me the waiting for testing trails would be years, I figured I’d just jump the line.”

“This is science, J.J. Yes a lot of it is bureaucratic nightmare-fuel, but it’s for a good reason. It’s to stop innocent kids from getting hurt.”

“I’m not a kid. I have the mind of someone triple my age.”

“You have the mind of no one any age,” Katie answers, frankly.

Even amid the chaos, he smiles.

“That’s not a compliment, J.J. It’s a fact. But it also doesn’t make what you just did okay. Those waiting periods are in place to stop anyone from jumping the gun.”

“You just said, I’m not everyone, am I? We’d just be waiting around to find out the inevitable.”

Katie takes a split-second break from attaching electrodes to J.J’s forehead to pinch her nose, in stress. “Well, that’s a load of crap.”

J.J. looks a bit shocked, but also annoyed. “Why?”

“All of science is a matter of trial and error. Even the smartest people in the world, the people who made the things that are in fact the stuff of technological and medical breakthroughs don’t always get things right on the first try. In fact, half of the science that’s proven to be revolutionary was discovered by accident, during trials.”

Katie makes a face and J.J. looks as though he’s finally allowing the panic to settle in.

“I mean, I’m sure everything will be fine,” she corrects herself, with a clearly put-on smile.

Katie waits only long enough to be sure his vitals are strong and steady before she pulls out her phone and dials Stephanie’s cell. Time to eat crow.  


###

  
Of course Stephanie has a small medical suite set up in the Powell’s basement in twenty minutes. If it were any different circumstances and J.J.’s charts could be read by any random doctor, nurse, or passersby, Stephanie would’ve had him at Cedars-Sinai within the hour, Katie’s sure.

Instead, she has to maintain his cover, and takes him back to the house immediately. Although Katie doesn’t have the medical school training that Stephanie does, Katie did have some training in the basics of emergency medicine.

They both take turns sitting with J.J., who at this point has returned to looking bored and exasperated with the entire experience, throughout the following twenty-four hours. His vitals appear to be normal and no effects appear to have resulted in his injection. 

The initial pain having subsided, J.J. seems content to read comic books and watch late night TV, for the time being. It’s halfway through Katie’s fifth shift that things get hinky. 

She hasn’t noticed it until mid-way through an episode of Conan because the lights are low and the monologue was killer. J.J.’s got a near full beard.

He’s fallen asleep earlier on so he must not have noticed it at the time. Either way, there’s no way that someone would normally grow a full beard over the course of several hours. 

Katie stands to wake him up and inspect it further when she notices that his regular hair is longer, too. “J.J., wake up.” He stays asleep, so her voice turns shrill and panicked. “ _J.J._!”

As soon as his eyes shoot open, he appears to be on her level. “What the hell?” He runs his hands over his beard and then back through his surfer-style hair. 

“This can’t be good,” Katie says, a little light-headed.  


###

  
After another full series of tests and regular vitals, they continue to have no idea what’s going on. So, in the meantime, to acquiesce with J.J.’s itchiness, she gives him a haircut.

“You’ve had to shave before now, right?” Katie says, mostly out of curiosity. The J.J. she works with every day is as clean shaven as the day is long, so she couldn’t say. 

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m not five.”

“I was just wondering. It’s weird,” Katie replies, side-eyeing what’s left on his chin as he razors another notch out.

“Again, not a kid, haven’t been a kid for a while.” He gives her a long and serious look through the bathroom mirror that makes her feel partly ashamed to have even brought it up.  


###

  
The only thing weirder about having seen someone grow a full beard and a shoulder length of hair overnight is watching them do it three times in an hour.

They’ve finally caught up to what’s probably going on, but now it’s just a matter of stopping it before it’s too late.  


###

  
Stephanie calls from the lab but leaves the phone on speaker, clearly so invested in the work she’s doing that she can only update Katie and J.J. with half her attention.

“It is rapid aging.” 

Katie breaths a small sigh of relief that at least they know what’s going on. J.J. is by himself in the bathroom, alternating between buzzing his head and his chin every few minutes. 

“Apparently we missed the part about the animals growing and the plants sprouting higher being not just about extended length, but rapid age jumps.” 

Stephanie has been using “we” a lot when referring to what’s going on, but she can tell that all J.J. has been hearing is “J.J.” based on the look of defeat he’s been nursing for hours.

It’s weird enough to see a science gaff be so totally untouched by J.J. and his abilities. It’s probably because the initial screw-up was his fault that J.J. is so scared to get back behind the wheel, as it were.

“So we’re going to run through a rapid trial of antivirals to see if the effects halt in the test subjects. If everything works out here, which it seems like it might, I’ll be home afterwards to give it to J.J. before he’s old enough to sign up for AARP.”

Katie lets out a very seriously scared laugh. “Okay, thanks, I’ll let J.J. know.”

She knocks on the door to the bathroom. “Hey, J.J. got a minute?”

In a raspier voice than she’s used to hearing from him, J.J. answers. “Got too many, looks like.”

Katie cracks the door open and gives him an update on what’s going on. He nods and lets out a tired sigh. “You know no one’s here. You could just let your hair go crazy for a while. Most human hair has a natural stopping point that even rapid aging wouldn’t push forward.”

“What do you mean?” he says, tapping the third cartridge of replacement razor blade inserts into a trash can. 

“Even if you let your hair grow out as long as it could, for years, it’ll stop eventually. For most people, at least, I think.” 

J.J. groans and the sound is so _old_ sounding to have come from J.J., it makes Katie jump a little. She hasn’t been doing the math, but she’s gotta guess he’s currently hovering in the early to mid-twenties, physically. So freaking bizarre.

“I feel like it’s a physical representation of how big I screwed up,” he says, hanging his head.

Katie waits a second before letting out a short laugh. “So what?”

J.J. puts the electric razor down and folds his arms.

“When I was in grad school, we had to do an autopsy on a cadaver and give a cause of death.” Katie tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and sits back down in the chair beside the makeshift hospital bed. “I diagnosed the patient with endocarditis as having a snake bite on his foot.”

J.J. just stares.

“He had a tattoo of a snake bite on his foot because he was a roadie for White Snake, turns out. Didn’t die from that or a snake bite and if he were alive he probably would’ve told me that. I would’ve missed the endocarditis unless someone gave me symptoms of it, too, so he would’ve probably died if I were his doctor, too.”

“Why are you telling me this?” J.J. asks, not unkindly.

“Because that’s why I went into biomedical research. I was so humiliated. I actually stood in front of the roadie for White Snake and said he died of a snake bite. We all make mistakes, but don’t let it stop you from trying. I mean, I love what I do, but with some time passing from then to now I really can’t believe how quick I was to just walk away from that path in life over pride.”

“So you’re telling me to not get hung up on me almost killing myself because it’s not the end of the world?”

“I’m saying it’s not the end of the world to look like an idiot once in a while.” Katie pauses and seems to will herself to pull her pant leg up a few inches on her right side.

J.J. has to squint, but after a few steps forward he can make out the tattoo of a snake bite on her ankle. “Oh, my god,” is all J.J. can respond with over laughter.

“Please don’t tell your parents that I have a snake bite tattoo when I don’t even listen to White Snake.” 

J.J. decides to pay her back by letting his beard grow out even further, hillbilly-style, and lets her pick TV reruns to watch.

Around noon the next day, Stephanie calls again to tell them that she’s made more progress and should return shortly with a way to reverse things. Jim and Daphne insist that she go home to change, shower, and rest some since Katie’s been here for two days straight.

She packs a bag and sets her alarm for only long enough to take a quick nap.  


###

  
Six hours later, Katie wakes to a chorus of beeps and ringing. Her alarm has been going off for hours and it’s only her house phone ringing for what appears to be the third time, based on the message count, which jolts her from sleep.  


“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” she mumbles to herself in a frenzy while bolting for the cordless. “Hello?”

“Hey, Katie, is everything okay?” Stephanie asks.

“I can’t believe I just fell asleep like that. Your son is in a life or death battle and I’m just snoozing it up at Chez Andrews, like an _idiot_ ,” Katie says, running around grabbing what she’ll need to bring back with her when she races over to the Powell’s.

“No, Katie. It’s fine. Your body just refused to stay awake any longer. J.J.’s taking a nap here, too. It would’ve been pointless for you to be here right now, anyway.”

Katie breathes a sigh. “So everything’s okay? Did it work?”

“Yes and no,” Stephanie says, her tone a little more reserved than before. “I just wanted to check that everything was okay. You told Daph you were only going to be gone an hour. Go back to bed, you deserve plenty of rest for all the time you’ve spent here already!”

“Please, Stephanie. He’s one of my best friends. Like I’m going to just leave him there.” There’s silence on the phone and Katie realizes what she just said. “Sorry, I just woke up.”

Stephanie laughs. “Take your time, but when you get back there’s some hiccups to address.”  


###

  
“Twenty-nine?” Katie parrots back to Jim and Stephanie. “ _Twenty-nine_?” She pauses for a long moment. “That’s like a decade.”

“A biomedical engineer and all you’ve got is ‘that’s like a decade’? I thought y’all were all supposed to be geniuses or something,” George says with a look.

Katie frowns in his direction. “Or _something_.”

“He’s still resting, but yes. There’s no way to tell for sure.”

“Unless you slice him in half and count the rings,” George tries, to a lot of unamused faces.

“Twenty-nine,” Katie says again, in disbelief. She knew he was in his twenties last night, but between the beard coming and going and the stress of the situation, it must not have fully registered. “He’s older than me,” she says to herself.

“So he appears to have stopped aging at the pace he was before. Obviously he’ll continue to age, but at the regular pace. Now we have to see if there’s a way to reverse it completely. Although there’s risks with that, as well.”

“Yeah, like brainiac in diapers,” George says, agreeing with a nod.

“For now, we’re just going to make sure everything’s evened out. You know, that the worst is over.”

There’s a sound from the hallway and Katie realizes it’s probably J.J., since Daphne’s out getting take-out. Someone at the table says something and George laughs and something else happens, but Katie can’t remember any of the specifics after J.J. emerges from the hallway.

“Oh, um,” Katie says looking around the room. “Oh.” She tries again. “Um.” 

“Katie?” Stephanie says, confused.

“Oh! Um. Oh, um. _Oh_ , um.” Katie can’t keep the words from tumbling out of her mouth involuntarily, she flattens a palm against her lips to stop it.

“It’s pretty crazy, right?” J.J. says, making a face.

Katie just shakes her head in what appears to be abject horror. She tries hard, really hard, to shake off the initial shock and instinctive reaction. Really hard.

When she finally gets herself calmed down, she still can’t help but let out, “ _Why_ ,” as her first coherent response. She has a feeling that’s going to haunt her for a while.  


###

  
He looks like a young Captain Kirk and it gives her nightmares. Well, dreams that she classifies as nightmares. She’s always, _always_ preferred Spock. It’s upsetting.  


###

  


January is a busy month for the Powell family. J.J. has to move out because the neighbors are going to notice if he just so happens to have jumped ahead in age ten plus years.

He continues his foray into forging and fraud by making a fake driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate. Yes, J.J. Powell exists, but now he’s almost twice his age.

After all the drama of getting him “out of state” and away from running into classmates or anyone who might ever connect the dots despite his considerably aged appearance.

Although they all decide to find an apartment of his own for him to live with Daphne in, while the pair attend college, is the best option, it's still in the early planning stages. For now, they decide he should probably stay with George or Katie, close enough for him to be visited regularly, but far enough that the share only a few common friends and neighbors. 

George having a random twenty-something roommate is agreed to be a little conspicuous, and probably more than a little difficult a façade to keep up with any length of time to anyone who knows him, so it falls to Katie to open up her small home office as a makeshift second bedroom. 

With all the busy work and rearranging of schedules that goes on, Katie is able to avoid dealing with grown up J.J. for longer than a few moments of calculated discussion. The conversation always turns back to their plans and their short term goals. 

Once J.J.’s birthday rolls around at the beginning of February, there’s not much left to fill the void. They take J.J. out for a nice dinner at his favorite place, a sci-fi themed bar and grille, that Katie doesn’t let on to having previously saved on her Foursquare’s To Do list. 

The small get together was the last on their immediate list of upcoming events and when everyone leaves for separate houses at the end of the night, the car ride’s sustained silence speaks volumes.

Katie unlocks the door and tosses her keys on the counter past the entranceway. She glances back over at J.J. before making a b-line for the small wine rack screwed into the wall behind her kitchen counter. She pours what is her third glass of wine without making eye contact.

J.J. looks around, seeming out of place, even though this is now his home as well. “I can get ready for bed if you want some privacy?”

Katie scoffs. “J.J., it’s only—” she checks her watch, “nine thirty. Most people your age haven’t even gotten the parties started yet.”

“Our age,” J.J. corrects, distractedly.

Katie sips the wine and falters. “You’re still eighteen, J.J., even if your body disagrees with you.”

J.J. pulls off his jacket and lays it on the back of one of Katie’s chairs before taking a seat for himself. “You know I used to think that, too, but the longer I’m this age, the more it feels right.”

“What?”

“Well, I spent half my time as a teenager feeling out of place. Like I had all this knowledge and everyone thought I was an idiot. Now, it just. It fits. It makes sense that someone my age could be this smart. Or at least smarter than average.” He scratches at his chin. “It’s like I woke up with all the credibility I’ve been trying to earn for years.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to stay this old. Don’t you want to experience all that stuff for yourself? The going to college and meeting people who see you as you are not as your were stuff?”

J.J. has been maintaining a thin layer of stubble on his neck and jaw. Katie knows this because she’s seen him shave at least a hundred times. She knows what clean shaven J.J. looks like. It might be because he’s aware of how good it looks on his face. Or it might be because of their talk about letting your pride take a hit, like it’s his small penance for his mistake, keeping some form of a beard even if it itches. She really hopes it’s neither of these reasons and instead that it’s just because he’s lazy. 

That would make things so much easier.

“Katie,” J.J. starts, sitting up in his seat to convey his seriousness. “I haven’t been a teenager since I was in that plane crash. It’s a pretty roundabout way to figure that out, having to shave ten more years off my life, but honestly this is the most normal I’ve felt in a long time. All things considered.”

Katie takes another sip of wine. Then two.

He continues. “Besides, did you really enjoy college all that much? Something tells me I’m not missing much on that front.”

“Sure, I did,” she says. Nodding maybe a bit too insistently. “I mean, the degrees certainly helped me get jobs.”

“Well, I plan on getting degrees, but that won’t take much time. I mean the idea of having to go through another round of pretending to be ordinary just to fit in, I’m glad that’s not in my future anymore. I don’t know, you tell me. Was it fun?”

Katie’s eyebrows shoot up, modestly, as she bows her head down. “I’m not you, J.J.”

“Yeah, but. You’re _you_.” 

There’s a long, electric pause and Katie feels as though she must swim up through the thickness in the air before she can speak again.

“I’m gonna go wash up.” She stops before putting the wine back. “I know I’m a terrible role model for suggesting this, but feel free to pour yourself a glass. I mean, you’re technically thirty, so it’s not really illegal anymore.”

J.J. laughs, making a face that’s hard to read.

“I mean you’ve certainly earned one, after the past few weeks you’ve had.”

When Katie comes back out in flannel pajamas and old t-shirt, J.J. has a glass of wine in front of his seat while he roots around the refrigerator. He pops up when he realizes she’s reentered the room. “Sorry, I’m still pretty hungry. I guess dinner wasn’t that filling.”

Katie laughs. “You had a Porterhouse.”

He shrugs, going back to piling a bag of pretzels with the bowls of ice cream he’s scooped out back across the distance between the kitchen and the living room. He sets one in front of the other open seat near the TV. Katie blushes.

“J.J. that’s sweet but I’m pretty full from dinner, unlike you.”

“Well, I’ll eat what you don’t finish,” he says, honestly, with a warm smile. 

Making her way to take a seat, she walks past where he’s bent over arranging the spoons and glasses. He stands back up when she gets closer to let her pass. It’s easy to forget that although J.J. did royally screw up the general bits of the drug testing, the initial goals were still pretty solid. He was taller, not by much, but since Katie is pretty short to start, he towers over her at just under six feet. 

There’s something about having to look up, knowing he’s J.J., that really just sends the surreality into over drive. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice this, with his back to her as he shifts forward and then back down again into his seat while she shuffles off to his right. 

Katie sits there wishing she’d used more freestanding chairs in this room. Sitting with J.J. on a sofa feels strangely dangerous right now. 

“You know this is the first drink I’ll have ever had,” J.J. says meekly.

“ _What_?” Katie responds with genuine shock.

“Yeah, I never really had any reason to or opportunity, I guess. I didn’t really run with a crowd that was big into drinking.”

“J.J., you were on the football team,” Katie says, still in disbelief.

He shrugs. “I don’t know, I just never drank, even at the parties. I guess I was worried that it would mess with my head. I’m not gonna lie, a stupid part of me is still worried about that.”

“I doubt that would affect your abilities. I know your parents drink and they haven’t ever said it screws with anything.”

“It’s not that, I figured it wouldn’t. I just get a little nervous about dulling my senses. I guess I still feel like my brain thing is still temporary and that’s just a reminder of it.”

“Oh, well. J.J., don’t feel obligated. I only offered if you wanted to.” Katie scrambles for a less awkward way to phrase things, but fails.

“No, it’s okay. It feels okay, now. Like, weirdly knowing that I’m this old and things are the same makes it feel less temporary. Pretty dumb since I didn’t actually age ten years or anything. But my body doesn’t really know it. So it makes it feel like I’m not going to grow out of it.”

Katie smiles and picks up the glass he refilled for her. She raises it to clink with his. “To permanence.”

They both take a sip. J.J. makes a face. “It’s a little bitter. Not what I was expecting. It’s not like grape juice.”

“No, you’d want to go with a flavored rum or schnapps for that fruity taste. Or mixed drinks. Nothing makes drinking more delightful than alcoholic snow cones.” Katie nods agreeing with her assessment. “I’m a terrible role model, your mother is going to fire me.”

“Hey, not all learning is done from reading books. I’ve got to find it out somehow.”

Katie lets out a long, withering laugh at that.

J.J. downs the half a glass of wine in a short gulp and sets it back on the table. After making a face, he reaches out for the ice cream bowl. He grabs a handful of pretzels and sprinkles them over the top of the vanilla bean scoops. “Ice cream’s gonna melt.”

“I don’t usually drink wine and eat ice cream simultaneously,” Katie says, unsure. “The flavors don’t exactly pair well.”

“Well, like I said. I’ll take care of leftovers.” J.J. pointedly eyes her unattended bowl.

She’s really not even that hungry, but the threat makes her playful instincts gear up. Before she knows it, they’ve got half the ice cream eaten and the rerun of Castle they’ve been watching is nearly over.  


###

  
J.J. signs up for classes at a community college to tide him over until the fall sessions begin. Starting classes halfway through the semester is okay if they’re being taken for experience, but the credits won’t necessarily transfer. For J.J. it’s a hobby. He can’t work in the lab at Global Tech since people knew him as an eighteen year old intern, so while he’s looking for part time work as thirty-year-old J.J., he’s got to do something to keep him sane.

Enrolling in the hardest classes the college offers is still not fully challenging but at least he’ll get a mental workout. Katie suggests he take a wide variety, not sticking to solely math and science courses, so that he can push his abilities to see whether they’ll affect things.

This is how he grows to hate ceramic pottery.

On the third week of him storming home, calling the whole concept of molding clay a primitive farce, Katie decides she has got to see this in action. She audits the studio time on a Thursday night that J.J. spends preparing projects for his Monday night class workshops. 

She’s no good at it either, of course, but the general concept certainly isn’t as bad as what J.J. makes it out to be. She can tell from the look on his face that he’s attempting to use his abilities and time and again they’re doing something to hinder his lopsided bowl.

Her art skills leave a bit to be desired, but the instructor explains that if you keep your elbows locked on top of your knees, eventually the surface of your palms will do all of the work for you. 

“J.J., I know that look. What are you trying to do?”

J.J. hasn’t explained why he hates the class beyond the subject matter being incomprehensible, but seeing it on his face, Katie now knows it’s not just that he finds it ridiculous. She can’t remember seeing J.J. struggle with anything for a while. It was kind of adorable.

He curses when the bowl caves in on itself, a minute later, and Katie has to hide her amusement.

“You know how my powers work, right? I’ve explained the way my brain just sees things and computes them like I’ve got instructions. The follow-through is second nature, but the guide I get is what triggers it.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it keeps starting and stopping. Like, it calculates the exact angles I need to pressure the bowl and my hands do it and for a second it’s great. Then the equation shifts because the sides moves infinitesimally in direction and it falls and I’m back to square one. It’s like giving someone a gun and having it jam every time they line up a shot.”

“J.J.,” Katie starts. “Stop trying to use your powers, then. They’re not going to help.”

“They must. I mean, I can forge signatures, I can paint okay. I just have to figure out how they relate to the follow-through and I’ll get this.”

“J.J., did you ever think that you’re so able to do those other things because you’re innately capable of doing them?”

“What?” he asks. He lets the imploded bowl loop around with a quiet _thuwump_ sound let out from the leftover moisture pushing the layer of clay back and forth on the wheel’s flat surface.

She speaks softly so the people a few feet away can’t hear all of their conversation. “Maybe the old J.J. without his powers would be able to master these skills with enough time and effort.”

“I doubt I could understand the ins and outs of neuroscience while rocking a C- average, even if I studied for years.”

“Well, not everything. I mean, the hard stuff for _you_. The science and the math obviously is different because your brain chemistry has changed. But the physical stuff. The athletics, the art, that could only be mastered if your instincts go along with it. It’s why you could probably master the kinesiology behind running a marathon, but can’t run one tomorrow.”

J.J. looks down at himself and has that stupid smirk. “A month ago I would’ve agreed with you, but I feel like I kind of grew into the body type that could handle it.”

Katie gives him a real sour face frown and squinty eye response. “Running a marathon isn’t something a world class athlete could do without some prep work, J.J. and that includes thirty year old you.”

“I think I could,” he says, disagreeing. 

“You know for a genius, you’re pretty dumb sometimes.”

His interest in throwing the bowl has been redirected towards proving his talents at running, something she’s never even known him to have an interest in prior to that.

Before the night’s over, he’s looked up local marathons and found something that’ll qualify. Two days from now J.J. plans to run 25k in support of Huntington’s disease.

Katie makes sure her schedule is clear and ensures him that she’ll be there. With popcorn.  


###

  
The day of the marathon is hilarious. For many reasons that probably aren’t actually that funny on their own merit.

First, J.J. comes home with a running outfit that is completely ridiculous. It’s one of those skin tight long shirts. He insists that the guys at the store claim it will help him stay fast and aerodynamic. It looks like he’s wearing a giant glove on his chest. 

When they get there, J.J. is blathering on about having mapped out the course in his head that will allow him to swerve around corners best and make the shortest distance. Katie continues her daylong session of nodding and feigning smiles. He can be a little insufferable when his ego finds a chance to prove itself.

She finds a spot near the finish line and sets up her small lawn chair and pulls out a journal article and her small plastic baggie of popcorn.

Twenty minutes pass, then an hour, then two. She’s almost beginning to worry when she gets text from J.J. _@ 9k mark can you get me?_

She hurries, unsure if he sprained an ankle or passed out. When she gets there, though, she just smiles.

He is hunching over holding his sides, breathing shallow, and clearly in extreme pain. “You,” he breaths in and exhales, “were,” he breathes again, longer this time, “right.”

She hands him her water bottle and smiles as he chugs it. She lets him use her as a crutch on their way back to the car. The entire car ride home is done in silence but for his deep, labored breaths.

He’s finally near normal when they pull into the driveway of Katie’s place. His countenance is still defeatist, but he’s now a little annoyed. Not in a mean way, but in a “what was I even thinking” kind of way. 

“Stupid shirt, I thought I was going to have a heat stroke,” he takes a long breath. “It’s like seventy degrees.” He peels it up and has a long, blind struggle trying to get the sweaty, skin-tight fabric up his broad shoulders.

Katie laughs at the scene, which looks like something out of a Benny Hill skit, for as long as it takes him to finally get it off and toss it angrily on the pavement of her driveway. Katie’s laugh fades as a shirtless, still vaguely panting J.J. stares grumpily down at the shirt.

“I’m sorry. You were right. That was the second dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

Katie quirks her head to the side, distracted. “The first being?”

J.J. makes a face and puts his hands out in front of him to indicate he’s referring to his body.

Katie frowns. “Why would — oh,” the whole aging ten years thing, “right, of course.”

“I guess there are some things,” J.J. begins, trying to sum up the experience, before Katie cuts him off with a hand wave.

“I can’t talk to you like this,” she blurts out. 

“Like what?” he says, hoarse.

Now she indicates his whole body. “Let’s go inside so you can put a shirt on.”

“What? Why is that—” he stops and his eyes light up. “Oh my god, you’re attracted to me.”

“J.J.,” Katie warns.

“Oh my god, that makes so much sense. Everything makes sense, now.”

Katie fumbles around for her keys and walks towards the entryway, ignoring him.

“I thought it was because you were annoyed at having to take me in, that’s why I’ve been saving all my money from the part-time job I have at the library. I mean, it’ll be awhile, but I’ve been searching for apartments online all the time.”

“What? I don’t care if you live here, the whole point is that you’ll be able to focus on school and restarting your life,” Katie says, caught off guard by the confession.

“Right, but now I now you’ve just been awkward because you like me, it’s no big deal.”

“What?” Katie asks, halting her movement as she opens the front door.

“I’ve had a crush on you for years. Long before any of this happened, you can ask Daphne.” He picks up his discarded shirt and follows her path.

Katie looks terrified. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don’t have to move, then. We both like each other. We can be together.”

He closes the distance between them. Katie throws her hands up and steps into the house. “Whoa, J.J. I can’t just be with you. You’re—I—no.”

“Why?” J.J. says, confused.

“Because you’re a kid.”

“I’m older than _you_ ,” he says back, clearly growing upset.

“Physically, yes. Mentally and emotionally, it still is too big a gap.”

J.J. looks off, suddenly stoic and unnerved. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m sorry.”

“J.J., come on. We’re both adults,” he rolls his eyes. “Sure we find each other attractive, but I find plenty of people attractive. I don’t date people just because of that.”

“Right.” He has a look on his face like wants to say so much more. Clearly for him it’s not just physical attraction and Katie has to stomp repeatedly at the mental responses screaming at her that it’s an oversimplified explanation of her own feelings, as well.

“Why don’t you get cleaned up and I’ll order a pizza, so we can just cool off and relax.”

It’s the last they speak about the subject for months.  


###

  
A year goes by slowly, but they aren’t sure if that’s because so much has happened or all aging feels slower after having watched J.J. jump forward in years so rapidly.

J.J. continues to live with Katie, but it becomes as much his home as hers. His room, her former office, gets a set of sheets and a comforter he picked out. His Colossus figurine gets put up on his nightstand. They paint the walls from light pink to gray in September.

He enrolls in Stanford in the fall and struggles with what major to declare because he loves science but focusing on one area is hard. Their continuing education program means that even his introductory classes are full of people from all ages and walks of life. He flourishes in school in a way he never has before, not having to pretend to be anything other than himself, even though he’s almost thirteen years older than he should be.

He dates a girl he works with at the library for a few weeks, although she’s twenty-two and busy focusing on graduating and finding long term employment and it doesn’t last. He dates a few other people from class and mutual friends met at Stanford. The ages range from twenty-two to thirty-three, of who Katie has met, although only in passing. It’s hard to judge how serious any of the relationships are since he never brings them back to the house. She’s only met them out at parties or special occasions. She can’t tell if he doesn’t bring them home because he’s uncomfortable with having to explain a female roommate or because he doesn’t want to rub it in her face.

It’s probably neither, Katie’s sure, since she really doesn’t care that much. It’s not like she hasn't dated anyone in the time that he’s lived with her. Sure it’s half the number of his, but he’s going to college and working with a ton of people his age in the research lab at the university. It’s certainly not a shock that he would meet more people than someone working the same job at Global Tech for five years would.

Besides, she wasn’t lying before. He is not hard on the eyes. That definitely helps his odds.

For Christmas he gives her a bowl he made in his spare time at the studio on campus. It’s jagged on the right side and altogether sloppy, but she can tell that he made it without using his abilities at all. She cries a little when she opens it. She gets him a nice pair of running shoes.

It might not have been the wisest of gift giving ideas, even though it was amusing at the time. He begins running two or three times a week before he leaves for class in the morning. More than once they accidentally run into each other as he’s getting home and heading for the shower without a shirt. More than once they have to play a polite game of maintaining no eye contact and pretending nothing happened.

By the time his next birthday comes, everything begins to feel normal. That night, she catches him in the hallway where he’s left to take a phone call and she’s returning from the bathroom, at the fancy bar where the party is being held. He’s saying goodbye to someone on the phone as she walks past. 

“A couple of people from my lab wanted to tell me sorry they were stuck at class and couldn’t make it,” he explains with a smile.

“They run you guys into the ground over there.”

“I’m sure they did the same thing to you, over at Caltech.”

“That's true.” She smiles warmly.

Something flickers on his face and he looks serious. Katie braces herself. “I told my Mom and Dad earlier, but I feel weird not telling you, too.”

“Yeah?” she says, the noise of the crowded bar making her voice sound less strained.

“I’ve halted any remaining research into reversing things.”

“Reversing—” Katie begins, confused. It hits her again, as it always seems to, that she’s forgotten he’s not always been thirty something. “Oh, J.J.”

“Don’t ‘Oh, J.J.’ me, I’m happy,” he says. His face lights up again, but it’s not forced. He has to speak up to be heard over the crowd but she’s sure that the delight in his face would’ve made him louder just from glee. “If twelve years is the price I have to pay for feeling like I’m myself for the first time in my life, then so be it.”

Katie’s face falls. “Twelve years is a long time.”

“So’s nineteen, but that flew by.” He smiles, big and toothy. “I was in a dark place before all this happened. I had to constantly pretend to be the way that I was, before the accident, way more than the rest of my family. They had to hide it from people, too, but they didn’t have to pretend to be something they’re not. Constantly.”

They stand in silence for a few seconds and Katie gives a small smile, finally understanding part of what’s been driving his ego all this time. 

“So, now, I don’t have to just be myself with you and them. I can be myself with everyone I’m friends with. I mean, sure, I’m still able to learn languages overnight and fix a jet engine in an hour’s notice, but the everyday version of myself isn’t a total lie. I’m not that guy anymore. I don’t have to be reminded that I’d be nothing without these powers.”

“J.J., _enough_ ,” Katie huffs. “I knew you before and after your powers.” Her tone and body language makes what would normally be a very plain statement sound like an accusation. “You never seem to remember that. I mean, obviously I know you better now, but still. The old J.J. was a great guy and I’m sick and tired of you throwing him under the bus. He was not an idiot. He struggled in school, he couldn’t throw a football very far, he wasn’t a polyglot. Big freaking whoop. Lots of smart, _gifted_ people I know went through the same thing.”

Something in J.J.’s demeanor seems to shift. He stares at Katie with wide eyes, blankly.

She continues. “Just because you woke up with that unfathomable genius intellect you are so ready to jump up and defend now doesn’t give you the right to belittle the talents you’ve had before.” Katie’s voice falters when she notices J.J.’s eyes have grown somehow wider and shiny. “You know why I love the bowl you gave me for Christmas? Do you really?” At his silence, she moves closer, tilting her chin up aggressively. “Yes, it’s cute and funny and it is a great place to put my keys next to the door. But, really, if I had told you to make that bowl with or without using your abilities, I would’ve gotten the exact same result. A lopsided mess that could accidentally cut me if I pick it up the wrong way. I—everyone here,” Katie stutters out and closes her eyes to take a breath and steady her train of thought. She looks over at the crowded table the party takes up and the friends and family scattered throughout the room. “We don’t love you for your brain. We love you for your heart, something that the accident had absolutely nothing to do with. I’m glad that you’re still _you_ after that crash, smarts or no smarts.”

J.J. finally blinks a few times, a few errant tears wetting his cheeks. He swipes at his eyes and can’t say anything back.

Katie wipes her own face, not realizing she’s started crying at some point, as well. She looks around, takes a deep breath, and squares her shoulders. “Happy birthday, Jim,” she says, walking past him for the door.

With that, she heads for her seat, politely yelling apologies to the small group gathered there that she’s got research to finish up before bed and leaves.  


###

  
When her cab drops her in front of her house, she holds her arms around her sides tight as she makes her way inside. Her hands linger over the bowl by her door as she tosses her keys down. She goes right for the wine and through angry tears, she scoops out vanilla ice cream into a bowl, then mashes some pretzel rods into them.

She’s not sure why she got so worked up over what J.J. had said before, but it’s still rolling around her head while she cries quietly into her bowl of ice cream and glass of pinot. What a stupid cliché. She makes sure to put on the most graphic true crime show she can find just to be sure she’s going against type. 

Just when the woman being interviewed onscreen describes the part where she lost it and murdered her two-timing husband, the door lock clicks open. Katie is still wearing her cocktail dress and is busy rubbing at a dropped splotch of ice cream when J.J. walks in. Her breath catches.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” J.J. says, unsteadily.

“You left your own birthday party to come after me. Now I feel like a jerk.”

Something secretive dances across his red-rimmed eyes. “I wanted to come after you.”

There’s nothing she can say that won’t give him an excuse to continue that thought and it scares her. Deep and serious scares her. She sets her bowl down and turns the TV off. The room is only lit by the dim kitchen recess lights and the street lamps outside. 

“You called me Jim,” he says, putting his own set of keys in the bowl by the door.

“I was mad at you,” she answers. “I’m still mad at you.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you?” she asks, confused.

“Thank you. I think I’ve needed to hear what you said to me for a long, long time. I think I’ve been mad at myself for a long time now, that I was suddenly capable of so much when I never seemed to be able to do that before. I was mad because it seems so easy to do this stuff now, it makes me frustrated that I ever struggled. It makes me feel like I was far dumber than I ever was because I’m not just smarter, I’m well, you know. _Gifted_. So, anyway, I’m sorry for that.”

Katie nods, glad to hear it.

“And?” she says.

“And what?”

“What else are you sorry about?”

J.J. makes an awkward face. “Is there something else to be sorry about?”

She stares.

He racks his big giant brain and quirks his head backward, genuinely stumped. Then his face blanches. “You don’t mean the decision to stay thirty, do you?”

She gives him a look that he laughs at.

“I’m not sorry about that, Katie. I told you before I’m happy. The beating up on the old me I definitely need to stop. But I’m not going back to that life. Having to fake being average, having to score mediocre on things just to avoid suspicion. I know it sounds like a dumb problem to have, but it really got me down.”

“But, J.J.—” Katie starts, but then she comes up empty. 

“I mean, my parents were a little sad about it, in the big picture, but they understand. They support me. Daphne could care less because now she'll never have to ask you to buy her beer.”

Katie still is at a loss for words.

“I know twelve years seems like a long time, but I think it’s a fair trade for having the chance to live untethered. I missed some stuff, yeah, but life’s a marathon. I might’ve sprinted from the starting line for the first mile but I’m still gonna have to struggle along the rest of the way.”

Katie shakes her head at that stupid metaphor and the stupid smug look on his face as he says it. She tries to argue but the words that she stumbles over are not what she thought they’d be. “But you’re supposed to go back, so things can go back to normal.”

“What is normal?” J.J. asks, seriously. “Me not living here? I’ll move out if that’s the problem.”

“No,” she says, upset. “Everything else. This, us, it needs to stop.”

“Stop being friends?” he asks, trying to parse her meaning.

“No.”

His face shifts again to that delicate look of shock she’s seen once before. Then a look of earnest sincerity breaks across his features. “Katie, let me say it again, in no uncertain terms, if I wasn’t clear enough about it the last time we had this discussion. I have had a crush on you for years and I have fallen deeper and deeper in love with you since the day we met. If you don’t feel the same, that’s completely fine. I have no problem remaining friends with you, because you are a force of nature in my life that I could not ever live without, romantically or platonically. But when it comes to the age I am, I promise you, I could be nineteen, I could be thirty-one, or I could be eighty-five. I’m going to love you, now, then, and forever, as far as I know, so it really shouldn’t be the sticking point that it seems to be for you.”

Katie staggers back like he just took a gut shot at her with a twelve gauge. “ _What_?”

“Sorry, I was trying to be direct. I know that was a lot.”

“I hate you so much right now, it’s gotta be palpable, J.J.”

“But you called me J.J.,” he says, with a gleam in his eyes.

She looks him dead in the eye and tries to come across as serious. “I really hate you.”

He laughs.

“You’re a menace,” she says, angrily, walking back towards him. She lifts her hand to smack him and he puts both his arms up as a shield when she does. “How dare you.”

“Why? What’s wrong with being honest with you?”

“Because why am I always the one who has to play the self-restraint game on expert.”

His eyes are so bright with mirth that it seems like the dark living room is once again lit up. He continues his stupid metaphor kick by maintaining eye contact while he leans over and presses power button on the lit up X-Box console on her TV stand.

“God, you’re so dumb,” she says, shaking her head back and forth looking at the ceiling for help.

“It was your metaphor.”

“I was playing Bioshock on there earlier. If my game didn’t save I’m gonna kill you.”

“Sorry, let me make it up to you.” He begins unbuttoning his flannel shirt.

“What are you doing?” she says, panicking.

“Hold on, I’m trying something.” He unbuttons the rest of the shirt and pulls off the thin white undershirt he has on beneath it until he’s standing there naked from the waist up.

“They’ll never find your body, J.J.” Katie warns him. “You’re ugly and mean. Leave me alone.”

J.J. comes closer and closer until their skin’s almost touching. Katie can nearly feel the hair on his chest move with the deep breaths he’s taking. He leans in and kisses her softly on the lips, pulling back before deepening it.

He pulls her flush against his chest and kisses her again, opening his mouth and angling his neck down and to the side so that their faces seem impossibly close.

She pulls back and puts a finger up between them. “You’re not using your powers for this, right?” 

He chuckles. “And how exactly would one even do that?”

“I don’t know, it helps with football, J.J. who knows. Angles or technique, I don’t know.”

“Should I be flattered or insulted?” he says, grinning ear to ear.

“Ugh, shut up,” she replies, slamming her mouth back on his. She pulls back again a minute or two later after her dress is starting to fall down and his pants are unzipped. “And just because I’m going to sleep with you doesn’t mean I’m in love with you.”

J.J.’s eyes go bleary as he all but fist-pumps at her statement, glancing around the room with glee. Then he catches the rest of it and calms down. “Right, I know, I didn’t mean to imply—” he trails off when she interrupts.

“I mean, we’re just two consenting adults. Who spend a lot of their time together and enrich each other’s lives and stuff,” she assures him.

His already glassy-eyed look turns totally glazed over when he realizing the only reason she’d be insisting this much is if she’s trying to convince them both of something she didn’t really believe. “Exactly. Just two consenting best friends who love each other, no big deal.”

She kisses him, long and meaningful, then. When she pulls back one last time, she barely leaves room between them to speak. Katie’s finger nails drag lazily down the length of his bare back, like a cat. Her mouth talking directly at his closed lips. “I always preferred Cypher to Colossus.”

J.J.’s skin breaks out in goose bumps, as though baring his soul to the love of his life and making out with her for ten minutes had been nowhere near as intimate as that statement. “But no one likes Cypher.”

Katie closes her eyes and when she responds, in a whisper, it sounds like a dare. “I _love_ Cypher.”

**Author's Note:**

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>  [+++](http://www.mediafire.com/download/bvbw3u32dsm057s/i%20want%20unsettled%3B%20jj%26katie.zip)  
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